The Good, Bad, and Ugly - Genesis 5:18-6:8

Copyright January 13, 2019 by Rev. Bruce Goettsche

Not long after I wrote my first book "Faith Lessons: Lessons in Faith from Genesis" I was interviewed on American Family Radio. I was intimidated to be on a national talk show and was acutely aware that I needed to be careful what I said. I talked for a little while with the host and then they opened up the phone lines. I believe the very first question was on the opening section of Genesis 6 (a passage I conveniently skipped when writing the book). The caller asked who I believed the giants were and who the "sons of god" were in the text.

I think I surprised everyone by answering, "I have no idea!" Once my failure as an expert was disclosed, I went on to explain the difficulty in interpreting this passage to the best of my ability. It’s just not me. Every commentator will tell you this is a most difficult passage.

But before we get to Genesis 6 we are going to make a stop in Genesis 5. This is a text most of us would skip over in our daily Bible reading. It is a genealogy of the line of Adam and Eve's son "Seth," the child born to Adam and Eve after the murder of Abel. In that long list of names is one that sticks out:

18When Jared was 162 years old, he became the father of Enoch. 19After the birth of Enoch, Jared lived another 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. 20Jared lived 962 years, and then he died.

21When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. 22After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived in close fellowship with God for another 300 years, and he had other sons and daughters. 23Enoch lived 365 years, 24walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him. (Genesis 5:18-24)

This Enoch is mentioned again in Hebrews 11

5It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying—“he disappeared, because God took him.” For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. 6And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. (Hebrews 11:5-6)

The Man Who Walked with God

So, did you get that? Enoch walked with God and then he was taken up to Heaven without dying. (The only other person in the Bible to do that was Elijah who was swept up by the chariot of God). This is all the more significant when we see the stark contrast with chapter 6 and the society that was so wicked, God decided to wipe it out in a worldwide flood.

Notice two phrases that stick out. In the Genesis passage in verses 22-23 we are told Enoch "walked with God." And in the Hebrews passage the phrase that draws our focus is "pleased God." A person who "walks with God" is also a person who "pleases God."

So, what does it mean to walk with God? This is different than having a meeting with God, or a chance encounter with God. This is something deeper. We meet with lots of people, but we don't walk with them.

Walking with God is not the same thing as God walking with us. When we say God walks with us, WE are setting the agenda. God is there to pick us up and rescue us when we need Him. It is like the difference between "Take your child to work day" and "Bring your parent to school day." In one the child gets to experience the world of the parent. In the other, the parent gets to experience (again) the world of the child.

When we walk with someone though a crisis, we are attentive to them. We think about them often, we look for ways to lend a hand. We spend time with them. There is a sense in which we tune in to their soul and their heart, so we see and hear what words cannot express. We make the journey through the crisis with them.

Walking with God means joining God in His purpose and plan. It involves time. It requires listening and paying attention. It is to pursue holiness with Him. You cannot walk with God and still play with sin. The longer you walk with God, the more distant from sin you will be.

The book of Hebrews tells us that it is impossible to please God apart from faith. "Faith" is one of those words we use so often it has somewhat of a washed out meaning. Perhaps a better word for faith today would be "Trust." When we have true faith in God, we trust Him.

We trust Him to guide us in the right way

We trust Him to tell us the truth

We trust Him to bring us purposefully through any trial

We trust Him for vindication when falsely accused or attacked

We trust Him to only do what is best for us

Walking with God is not a common experience. There are many who talk about walking with God who are not anywhere near the path on which God is walking. Their lives reveal they are on a different path, the wide path, the way of the world, rather than the way of Christ.

Imagine a fork in the road. One says, “The way of Christ” the other says, “the Way of the World.” They travel in different directions with different destinations. There is a choice to be made. The natural inclination will be to follow the crowd. Jesus calls us to take a step out of the crowd and follow Him. If you do not choose the way of Christ you will be naturally swept up in the crowd. Which road have you chosen?

We desperately need more Enochs in our world. Enoch was a man who stood out in a corrupt world because of his character. I want that to be said about me. I hope that’s what you want said about you.

The People Who Walked Away from God

We turn now to Genesis six and the difficulties contained therein.

Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. 2The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. 3Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”

4In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.

5The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. (6:1-6)

The difficulty in the verses is understanding who these "Sons of God" and "daughters of men" and what was the nature of their relationship? Who are the Nephilites? And how do their actions speak to God's disgust with the creation that led God to destroy the earth with a flood?

Before we get to that however, let’s look at verse 3. The comment about the 120 years can be read in one of two ways. The New Living Translation tells us their opinion by their translation. rit could be read as God's decision that He is going to start limiting the lifespans of human beings. Up until this time people lived a long time. Enoch's son, Methuselah who was the oldest man in the Bible at 969 years!! It is apparent that after the flood something changed! None of us can make it 969 years today! And, none of us would want to!

Is it possible people lived that long? This idea seems preposterous to us. We start groaning and complaining when we turn 50! With the Great Flood, the world changed dramatically. How did God do this? I suspect, like creation, all He had to do was speak the command and it was done.

The second possible interpretation is God was saying it would be 120 years before the flood would come and put an end to all the wickedness for a while. God was planning a reboot of His creation! Personally, it seems that both of these understandings may come into play here.

Now let’s turn to the big questions! The interpretations vary widely with good people holding each view. There are two primary views of how to understand the identity of the Sons of God and daughters of men.

The first view is the "Sons of God" are the descendants of the godly line of Seth and the "daughters of men" would refer to the daughters of the line of Cain. In other words, the sin here is the mixing of the godly and the ungodly. The argument for this view comes from the fact that we just came from the genealogy of Seth and this passage may be describing how the godly line of Seth started to also go down a wrong course.

The second view says the Sons of God are angels who abandoned their role and became intimate with some of the women of earth. The children of these relationships became somewhat of a mutant. This is a mind-stretching view but it does seem to be the accepted view of the Jews and many Christian thinkers.

For this to happen it would seem the angels would have had to take possession of some strong leaders and lead them to be intimate with the women. There are a couple of texts in Scripture that may refer to this.

The first text is in 2 Peter 2:4-5

4For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

The other text is from the one-chapter book of Jude verse 6

6And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day

If these passages are referring to this account in Genesis, it becomes quite compelling! What was happening was sin had gotten so bad that it even drew in the angels of Heaven (which made the example of Enoch even more powerful). The rebellion was growing and God determined to put a stop to it.

I lean toward this view that fallen angels lusted for the women of earth. I think the only way that could happen is if they took possession of some of the powerful men in the world (kind of like demon possession) creating a powerful human being.

After all these years, if I was put on the spot, I would give a much more complete answer than before. Yet, I still would not be dogmatic about the early part of Genesis 6. However, here is what we do know: whichever explanation we embrace, we see God’s creation ignoring God-established boundaries led to The Flood. I think our times could be just as bad now. God promised He would not send a flood like that again to wipe out the inhabitants of the earth. There is however, coming a day when an even more fierce and permanent judgment will come: when the Lord returns.

Conclusions

The question we have is: What do we make of all of this?

First, The pattern we see here is exactly the same as in the Garden: They saw, they liked, and they took. There was no thought of right or wrong. They desired, and they went after what they desired. Is that not the same pattern we see today?

God has declared marriage to be between a man and a woman. He said intimacy should be only within the context of a committed marriage. But such relationships are now the exception rather than the rule. We have rewritten the definition of marriage and the cases of sexual abuse or license is greater than ever. God's fences are being trampled because our desires have become our god.

It is not just sex! God tells us to learn to be good stewards and be content with what God has given and yet consumer (and governmental) debt is like a runaway train! We have more stuff than we know what to do with, and we still want more! Again we are being controlled by our desires rather than God’s directives.

God warns us about gluttony but most of us are overweight and seem to live to eat rather than eat to live. He warns us to beware of our anger, yet, impulsive fits of rage account for most of the violent activity in our society. He counsels us to be wise in our speaking yet all you have to do is browse Facebook or Twitter to see how reckless people are with their words.

When we are controlled by our desires it means we are no longer controlled by the Lord! Our society is on a downward spiral which will eventually end in the final Judgment of the Lord! So, this passage is not as obscure as you might think. It is drawn as a stark contrast to the account of Enoch who walked with God.

Second, we must choose whether to walk with God or live according to our desires. To not choose is to choose! It is to allow yourself to be swept up in the sinful nonsense of our day. Rather than get too distracted by the debates about what happened, we ought to be asking ourselves: What motivates us in our living. Rather than argue over who the Son’s of Men are, let's focus on how we can be like Enoch and walk with God! May we be people who hunger for something greater than the superficial relationship with God that most people have. Let's live like members of His family; like those who truly trust Him and are willing to obey Him even when we would prefer to do something else! Let's set out to walk with God and to follow where He leads.

Third, we are reminded the result of sin is ALWAYS destruction. I harp on this over and over. I think it is important to admit the consequences of our actions. We seem to feel that God’s instructions are given to us to control us and to limit our freedom. But that is not it at all, God gives us His commands to protect us, guide us, and show us the best way to live. He is helping us not controlling us. He is showing us how life was designed to be.

When we refuse His counsel the consequences are great. That destruction may not be immediate, but it will come. It comes to the society, our family, our churches, our schools. Every time we depart God's path, we are indulging our own desires. To do this is to feed a monster. We make the same point we made with Cain . . . the wise person admits and repents of sin as soon as possible. The longer we wait to acknowledge our wrongdoing, the more time we give our minds a chance to justify our behavior, which will only deaden our conscience, so it takes more and more to bring us to a conviction of sin. If that goes on long enough, our hearts harden and then we are in REALLY BIG trouble. A deadened heart has stopped its ears to the whispers and summons of God's Spirit. One cannot be made right with God apart from the work of God's Spirit.

There is a phrase in Genesis 5 that should sober us. After every genealogical entry it say, "and he died." With the exception of Enoch, everyone dies! "The wages of sin is death." Every one of us will die unless we are here when the Lord returns. EVERY ONE OF US. The question of "what happens after we die?" is not a theoretical question, it is intensely practical. We are all going to die . . . and then what?

Once again, we stand with a searchlight upon our souls. Are we more like Enoch who walked with God, or like the sons of god who saw, liked, and took? Followers of Enoch submit their desires to the will and purpose of God. The other, exalts desires into the position of God! One leads to rebirth, contentment, and an eternal house in Heaven not made by human hands. The other leads to a never satisfied insatiable desire for more and an eternity in a place where the fire never dies, and thirst is never quenched.

The path you travel may not be clear to you immediately. Seek the Lord. Ask Him to show you the true "god(s)" of your life. And when he does, make the needed adjustments. And do it quickly. The consequences are significant and regardless of what we may think, we don't know how much time we actually have.